Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

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Spectra
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Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by Spectra »

I have a weapon texture and I want to make it unlit, so that it won't react to lights. But I don't know how to do that. Can someone explain me how to make a Weapon Texture Unlit?? I have seen certain textures like the Shock Rifle, NW2 Bolt Rifle and NW3 Bolt Rifle. If you see some textures are unlit.....

Shock Rifle having Unlit Texture:
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NW2 Bolt Rifle having unlit texture:
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NW3 Bolt Rifle having unlit texture:
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Any help or suggestions would be a great help for me.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by Feralidragon »

It's not the texture that is unlit, but rather the polys of the model itself.
Basically, before the import of a 3D model, you can setup some flags in each poly to be either unlit, translucent, 2-sided, environment mapped, etc. In the case of _d.3d/_a.3d files, there's UnrealFX for that, as for .psk/.psa files there isn't a tool that I know of, but the binary format is documented in UDN and probably a tool can be built to setup the same exact flags (eventually).
In some 3D programs like 3DMax and Blender, you can name the material groups in a certain specific way so the exporter automatically sets the polys used by that material to be also unlit, translucent or others.

In case of NW3 however, a lot of the unlit textures you see are overlays ("sub-models" of sort to speak that I built specifically to be rendered on top of the main model with a specific effect).
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by Torax »

There's another interesting way to force textures don't be affected with light.
Shivaxi from OldUnreal used simplest way to add shiny parts in Unreal HD weapons
His method (as i understand from code of mod) is:
- create copy of texture, where present parts which must be visible always (buttons, energy cores or wires etc)
- fill whole the texture area with black color, except stuff which i listed above
- add some extra color to those parts (i will not describe mechanics of making this in photoshop, it's another theme)
- and to use those darkened textures with only few "buttons" wisible, make an overlay effect like shieldbelt effect, but set those edited textures to be used as equal multiskins of each model

I described this as shortly as i can, coding part of it is a bit more expanded.
I think Ferali used a kind of this manipulations to add overlayers for NW3 ( but i could be wrong, i did not looked to search code for overlayers effect)
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Feralidragon
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by Feralidragon »

What I did in NW3 was along those lines, except that I built the overlay models specifically for that purpose rather than reusing the entire weapon models (mostly to not waste resources, such as poly count and texture space).
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by Spectra »

Yes I know the overlay models are actually scaled 1% or 2% bigger or smaller than the original one and then you put those Fire Textures on them, but how to unlit make a single texture unlit?

I have a single texture of laser with 4x256 pixels. I just want that texture to be unlit that's it. I don't use 3DS max or Blender, is there any way to make the texture unlit using MS3D?

Or later I will try with Shivaxi's method.
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by papercoffee »

Rocky wrote:a single texture of laser with 4x256 pixels.
:lol2:

...256x256 or 256^2 :wink:
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by Spectra »

Ah! Sorry. I meant 64x4 Pixels :?
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Re: Make a Weapon Texture Unlit!

Post by papercoffee »

No Rocky ...what I did mean was, you declare the dimensions of a texture by its wide and breadth and this has always be square. Therefore are the wide and breadth equal ... 256 pixel wide and 256 pixel breadth.
You normally say then 256x256 or 256 squared (256^2) or simple a 256 texture ...this texture has in total 65536 pixels.

In your case would have a 256x4 big texture only 1024 pixel in total ...a very small picture.
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